Bodies and Souls

by Nancy Thayer

  Up in her bedroom, she closed the curtains at the windows that opened onto the street and pulled back the curtains on the windows that gave onto the backyard. There was no house immediately behind her, no way that anyone could see in unless they happened to be parachuting by. The sky was overcast and the wind was blowing, tossing the amber leaves of the ash trees behind the house in a steady dance. It was a chilly day for October, and it looked chilly: a good time to be inside.

  Suzanna stripped her bed and carefully spread on the new sheets she had bought, silvery-colored satiny Christian Diors. She had stood for at least fifteen minutes in the department store in Southmark worrying over these sheets. Should she buy them? They were sinfully expensive. But they were also on sale. And they were so tempting, so luxurious. Now she smiled at her purchase as she smoothed the shimmering fabric across her bed, transforming it just as Madeline had transformed her life, from an ordinary thing into a thing that could shine with magic and beauty.

  She looked around her room, pleased. It was her room now, painted the colors she had chosen, colors Tom would not have liked: oyster-pale walls with silver-blue woodwork and doors and mauve curtains and chair and spread. The sheets went perfectly with the room: they glimmered as the room did, opalescent.

  She went downstairs and found the silver ice bucket—a gift to her and Tom when they married—and filled it with ice, and found the one bottle of champagne she had in the house. She carried it up and put it on the bedside table, then made another trip downstairs and up, bringing a silver platter with grapes, sliced pears, cheddar cheese, and bars of Swiss chocolate. She had been saving the champagne and the chocolate for a special occasion, and she had decided that today that occasion had arrived. She put the platter in the middle of the bed, and two long-stemmed crystal champagne glasses on the other bedside table. There, now. She stood for a moment, savoring the sight of all this silver, all these pleasures, until Glutton, the cat, appeared from nowhere, attracted by her incredible radar, to leap in one swift movement onto the bed. She was a beautiful cat and would have fit in nicely with the scene, but her eyes were clearly on the cheese, and weird cat that she was, she probably would have nibbled on the chocolate, too. Suzanna grabbed her up, tossed her out into the hall, and shut the bedroom door.

  I’m ordinary, Suzanna thought, just a schoolteacher in a tiny New England town. I’ll never shape the world, I’ll never have glamour or drama or fortune or fame. I’m verging on chubbiness and middle age, and someday Fate will crush me just like it’s crushing poor Wilbur Wilson. But I can make this day special. If only for today, I can be the happiest person in the world.

  She stripped off her church clothes and hung them up, instead of tossing them over her chair as she often did, then took out her white terry-cloth robe and went to the bathroom. She showered, powdered, and perfumed herself, looked at herself in the mirror. But the habit of being critical, even demeaning, about her own body was too strong within her, so she wrapped her robe around her body and thanked heaven that Madeline saw her with different eyes.

  The doorbell rang then: Madeline. She came in, wearing jeans, a beige knit shirt that looked very much like a waffled undershirt, and a blue down vest.

  “Well,” she said, eyeing Suzanna in her robe. “Look at you!”

  “I told you,” Suzanna said. “The children will be gone for four hours. Let’s go upstairs.” Out of force of habit, she locked the front door, and after they had climbed the stairs and entered the bedroom, she locked that door, too.

  “Well,” Madeline said again, when she saw the silvery bed, the champagne, the tray of fruit and chocolate. “Look at all this. What a treat, Suzanna!” She turned to embrace her.

  “Let’s get in bed,” Suzanna said. “I want to talk to you seriously.”

  “Shall we take our clothes off?”

  “Of course.”

  But when they were finally settled, naked, sitting cross-legged, sipping their champagne in the middle of the bed, Suzanna realized she wasn’t going to be able to concentrate. She could never look at Madeline’s naked body without wanting to touch her.

  “Oh, dear,” she said to Madeline. “I was wrong. We’d better put on some robes at least. I really do want to talk to you.”

  Madeline rose from the bed then, and Suzanna thought that she was going to get a robe, but instead she turned, took the silver platter from the bed with one hand, and Suzanna’s champagne glass from her with the other, and set them on the table. Then she came back to the bed and knelt down just behind Suzanna, and lifted Suzanna’s hair, and spoke whispering against her neck.

  “We can talk later,” Madeline said. “We can talk over the telephone. We can talk when your children get home.” As she spoke, she ran her hands lightly down Suzanna’s shoulders, back, neck, arms, and finally, so lightly, around and over her breasts.

  “Yes,” Suzanna said. “Yes. All right.” She sat perfectly still, all her senses alert, receptive, as Madeline dallied her long slender fingers slowly over Suzanna’s skin. They had done this before, they had teased each other’s bodies awake, but rarely with such elegant restraint. Madeline would not let Suzanna turn to embrace her. She stayed behind her, sliding her tongue down Suzanna’s spine, nibbling at her shoulder blades, her hips, her back, all the while moving her fingers gently over Suzanna’s breasts and waist, until finally Suzanna was too weak to sit, and sighing, “Madeline,” she slid downward on the bed. Madeline very slowly kissed and touched Suzanna, as if she were designing her body, each limb and finger, each rise and fall of flesh. Pleasure swirled in Suzanna’s body, just beneath her skin; pleasure beat in Suzanna’s blood and throbbed at the pulse in her neck, the pulse in her groin. Still Madeline kissed, licked, touched, all in a sliding motion, up and down Suzanna’s body, until Suzanna felt pleasure flowing in her like a liquid, curving through her limbs as if she were a riverbed and pleasure were the river, eddying and building and rushing through the channels of her body, until it stopped in desperation to pound and billow, caught, blocked, between her legs. She was hot, moist, frantic. “Madeline, please,” she said, and before her eyes closed, she saw Madeline’s smile. At last Madeline put her hand between Suzanna’s legs, and her mouth on Suzanna’s breast, and slid her long cool body against Suzanna’s, and with the elegant expertise of a locksmith, she fiddled, turned, slid, and thrust her fingers until the lock of Suzanna’s body opened and the floodgates of her pleasure surged full and burst. Suzanna was carried away in pleasure.

  She lay a long time just holding on to Madeline before she opened her eyes.

  “That was lovely,” Madeline said softly, looking at Suzanna with fond love, kissing her forehead and cheeks, smoothing her damp hair.

  “Yes, oh, yes, thank you,” Suzanna said.

  “My pleasure,” Madeline replied, and meant it. It was true. For when they made love to each other the pleasure was doubled; it echoed, as now, when Suzanna rose above Madeline’s body, and felt her own body fill again with pleasure at the sight and thought of her hands and mouth on Madeline’s breasts and stomach. She loved Madeline, loved giving her pleasure—and she knew just how sweet a particular dabbing at this moist spot felt; the sensation flickered in her own skin. The joy was twinned.

  They let it build. Madeline’s body was already eager, wet, and rosy, from loving Suzanna, and as Suzanna loved Madeline, her own body reawakened and in its greed attained a new level of awareness. They were caught up in a private cove of sexual sensation, and now Madeline rippled sleekly in the shallows of pleasure, smiling, eyes open, as she trailed her fingers in Suzanna’s hair. And now she was sucked down into a violent whirlpool, tugged relentlessly under. Her fingernails dug into Suzanna’s back as she grasped for something to hold on to, and the slight stinging of Madeline’s nails sank into Suzanna’s skin and, sinking, became pleasure, became a greed, so that Suzanna was soon caught up in her own wet search, plunging over Madeline’s hands down toward a finer, deeper, more intense level of ecstasy. Finally they were so soaked
and slippery with sweat and saliva and other juices, so shaken from their explorations, that as Suzanna lay spread-eagled against the silver sheets, gasping for breath, Madeline had only to ease her body down over Suzanna’s, so that breast touched breast, mouth touched mouth, thigh slid against thigh, and the damp matted pubic mounds touched, pressed, pushed, and they arched against each other shuddering. Pleasure ran through and over them in an exquisite tense line; they were caught on each other.

  They drew the covers up over them and lay together. Suzanna scooted on her stomach over to the edge of the bed to get a good look at the clock: three hours had gone by.

  “Umm,” she sighed. “We should get up. Get dressed. Want to talk now?”

  “I don’t think I’m capable of anything else,” Madeline said, smiling. She stretched out a bare arm and pulled Suzanna to her. “Dear thing,” she said, nuzzling her hair. “I do love you.”

  “I do love you,” Suzanna said. They lay there a few minutes more, then rose, showered, dressed, and carried the champagne and food downstairs to the living room. Finally they were seated, just like two friends having a chat, in case the children walked in, across the coffee table from each other.

  “Now,” Madeline said, “what do you want to talk about?”

  “I want to live with you,” Suzanna said. “I want you to move in with me. I don’t want to wait any longer.”

  “Suzanna—”

  “No, Madeline, listen. Today at church, I was praying, oh, God, please give me some kind of sign. Well, and of course nothing seemed to happen. But as I was leaving church, when the service was over, an older man, Wilbur Wilson, had a heart attack. One moment he was walking along, smiling, and the next minute he fell to the floor, clutched his chest, and nearly died. Maybe he will die. I suppose he would have died right there if Liza Howard hadn’t give him artificial resuscitation. It caused quite a commotion. Poor old man—he’s awfully nice. I called the hospital a little while ago—he’s alive, he’s resting comfortably, his condition is good. But, Madeline, as I stood there watching him, I realized how short life is. How fragile life is. Madeline, I don’t want to wait any longer to live with you. Who knows how much longer we have to live, and why should we wait till the children are gone and we are old and cranky to share our lives? Madeline, I don’t want to wait any longer. I want you to move in now, this week.”

  “My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,” Madeline said. She rose, crossed the room to get a cigarette, lit it while still standing.

  “What?” Suzanna said.

  “It’s a poem by Thomas Campion. I came across it the other day; you made me think of it. Or it made me think of us.

  “My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,

  And though the sager sort our deeds reprove,

  Let us not weigh them. Heaven’s great lamps do dive

  Into their west and straight again revive,

  But soon as once set is our little light,

  Then must we sleep one ever-during night.”

  “Oh,” Suzanna said. “That’s lovely. That’s just what I was saying. Madeline—”

  “All right,” Madeline said, and came back to the sofa, sank down onto it, flicked her cigarette at the ashtray. “Let’s take all this step by step. We agree on the fact that we love each other, that we want to live together. Forget for a moment your children, the community, our jobs, your ex-husband—which is a lot to forget. Think about us living together: where would I sleep?”

  Suzanna laughed, surprised. “Why, in my bedroom, of course.”

  “Where would I put my clothes?”

  “In my closet, silly. Oh, I know it’s crowded, but I can easily weed things out. Hang some of my things in the guest bedroom—”

  “My records? My furniture? My books?”

  Suzanna stared at Madeline. Her face fell. “Oh,” she said, “I see.”

  Madeline came up from the sofa, moved to Suzanna, knelt by her legs, and looked up, hugging her. “Suzanna, don’t look that way. I want to live with you. But if we do such a major thing, we can’t do it halfway. We’ve been doing it halfway for two years now. If you really want me to live with you, then we have to talk about it seriously. We have to talk about anything that could be a potential problem. You can’t just squeeze me into this house, a bit here, a piece there. I’d go crazy. I’m a grown woman. I’m used to living alone, to arranging my things, the things I’ve collected and loved for years, all around me, the way I want them. I have to have a study to work in, to keep my books in, to grade papers and make lessons, and I have to have more room for my clothes than a corner of your closet. I don’t even know if we could work it out in this house.”

  Suzanna looked at Madeline, stunned. “But—” she said, and waved her arm slowly outward, looking about her. Madeline knew exactly what Suzanna meant by this; she meant: But my house. This house that I’ve made so beautiful. The hours I’ve spent choosing the right wallpaper, the perfect shade of paint, decorating the children’s rooms, painting the woodwork—how could I give up my beautiful house?

  “I see,” Suzanna said at last. “I’m asking you to give up your beautiful apartment, and it’s just as difficult for you as if I were to give up my house.”

  “Well, perhaps not quite so difficult,” Madeline said, and leaned forward to kiss Suzanna on the cheeks, the forehead, the mouth. She smiled, then rose and settled back again on the sofa facing Suzanna. “I’m used to moving around, after all. I’ve lived in six towns in the past ten years. But now I’ve got tenure at the college, and though I’ll admit I never thought I’d end up staying at Southmark, I’m beginning to see the charms of the area. Mainly—you. I’d like to settle here. I like the college and my colleagues and the students. And I love you. I want to live with you. I don’t mind moving from my apartment. But if we are going to live together, Suzanna, I can’t live in your house. We will have to live in our house. Don’t look so dismayed. I don’t envision us fussing over whether to put chintz or Haitian cotton in the living room. I’ll be delighted to leave all that to you. I love the way you’ve made this house look. I’d sell my furniture gladly. But I have to have my own study, a place for my books, my desk, my papers. I have to feel free to light a fire or move a chair or buy a lamp …”

  “We’d have fun in the kitchen.” Suzanna grinned. “I mean, if we combined my Cuisinart with your escargot set and my wine with your wine rack—”

  “We’d have a lot of fun in the kitchen,” Madeline agreed. “And in the bedroom. But there’s something else. If you’re really serious about living together.”

  “God, let me pour some more champagne,” Suzanna said. “Okay, go ahead. What else?”

  “The children,” Madeline said. “We’d have to have some rules or agreement about my relationship to the children. If I move in with you, Suzanna, that means I move in with your children, and if I do move in, I want it to be for good—”

  “Oh,” Suzanna interrupted, “so do I!”

  “For keeps. So we’d have to talk seriously about the children. The decision about just what and how much to tell them is entirely yours, of course. I’ll abide by whatever you decide. I like Priscilla and Seth and I think they like me. I can imagine all of us living together quite happily. But if we do live together, I can’t just play sweet auntie to them. Let’s say, for example, that I want to take a bath and they’ve just bathed and dropped their towels all over and left their toys in the tub. They do that, I know. I’ve seen you go in and straighten up after them. My instinct is to march the little munchkins into the bathroom and say, ‘You made the mess, you clean it up. Hang up the towels. Put the soap in the bowl—’ ”

  Suzanna laughed. “Their soap is disgusting, isn’t it? They’re supposed to be able to color on their skin with it, and on the tub and the walls, then wash it right off. Instead, it dissolves and settles in the tub in little black or brown or red hunks—”

  “Well, you see, Suzanna, what I’m saying. I’d want to make them clean it up.”r />
  “I know, and you’re probably right. It’s just that usually, at the end of the day, it’s easier to do it myself than to make them do it.”

  “I’m not criticizing your way of raising the children. I’m just saying I’d do it differently sometimes. So we’d have to make it clear to each other and to the children just what kind of jurisdiction I’d have.”

  “My God,” Suzanna said. “It’s complicated.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” Madeline said. “About six years ago I—went with—a man who had a little boy. The boy’s mother was dead, and the man, who was completely reasonable and intelligent in every other way, was crazy where this kid was concerned. He was so determined never to let his son suffer again that he refused to spank the boy, or punish him, or yell at him, or threaten him—God, that child was a holy monster. Lincoln was handsome, charming, wealthy. He asked me to marry him. If it hadn’t been for little Lincoln, Jr., I might have. But I couldn’t stand the thought of living with that kid.”

  “I didn’t know you had almost married—”

  “Suzanna! I’m not trying to make you jealous. Stop it. My God, you have been married. You have two children. And I want to live with you. I’m telling you, I love you, and I love your children. But I want to do it right.”

  “Money,” Suzanna said.

  “What?”

  “Well, if we’re talking about everything, we’ll have to talk about money. I mean, about sharing the mortgage and the groceries—there’s three of us and just one of you, of course. We’ll have to sort all that out.”

  “Yes. These are all touchy issues.”